Coming from a husband and wife duo who made it their mission during the pandemic to create and release a game together, AlphaLink is the kind of throwback arcade title that we love here at the Tavern. It’s simple to get to grips with, and has potential for addition to the local game night rotation for sure. It’s not without issue, but what’s here is a decent game to enjoy.
Gameplay consists of four players fighting on a single screen arena in various modes. This can be against bots in the story mode, local multiplayer or even, unusually for a smaller title, online. I get Deathtank vibes from the visual and gameplay style – which is no bad comparison. Rounds are a few minutes long, and task players with getting the most kills, being the last man standing, or capturing points in the arena. It’s immediate action that’s easy to grasp.
Movement is a little awkward to get to grips with mind. Our soldier can jump, wall jump, shoot, dash, and melee in action, but while the combat side of things is fine I found too often that I was having issues wall jumping or getting over parts of the scenery. The jump is nice and floaty, but this can add to the issue as I jumped to high into a wall or the like. I eventually got to grips with it, though still found some times where I just couldn’t move as freely as I’d need to in battle.
As I say, combat is much better across the board. We get three shots out the gate to attack with before we need to let them recharge. Aiming and movement is done with the left stick, and to fine aim we need to hold LT. This will stop our movement, allowing us to aim in all directions at the cost of becoming vunerable. Again, this took a little getting used to but in the action I actually found it to be fun to use. The dash lets us, well, dash out of harm’s way, while the melee is best used when the action gets all up close and personal – and it will. The arenas encourage players to get together constantly, so long range gun fights are pretty rare.
Each player can sustain two hits: one to break the shield, another to kill them. Respawn times are fast, and the small arenas mean that it’s a matter of moments before we’re back in the thick of it again. The tricky movement can make this a bit of a pain at times, as some levels have turrets also shooting at us, or spawn locations that are right where all players are convened, leading to almost instant deaths as we try to scramble out of the way or fight back.
Solo players can work through a story whereby we’re basically playing a succession of bots matches. There’s a story here but in all honesty it did nothing for me, steeped as it was in factions and names that were just seemingly thrown into the tale without much explanation. It can be quite tough at times, and drawn out too. One battle had the four of us vying to get 10 kills first, which took several minutes of rounds. After winning my third attempt, a boss appeared and instantly killed me, meaning I had to win the 10 kill round over again. This happened three times, and felt like a bit of a kick in the sack, so was the point I put the story down to test out the online play.
Speaking of factions, each player can pick one of three to represent at the start of the game. This goes across the player’s game, so we can see in the leader boards which faction in getting ahead thanks to the real world players participating. I’ve always enjoyed this idea, and it could prove to be quite fun if the community gets behind it.
Online play works surprisingly well, with four players matched in various game types to battle it out. I’ve only had a handful of games, but wait times were not too bad and players seem to be getting invested with plenty of high levels in the lobbies already. It’s great to see a smaller title have online play at all, and again hopefully that’ll help bolster the faction wars going forward.
Conclusion
Even with some tricky movement and super hard solo road blocks, I enjoyed what I played of AlphaLink. It’s got that old school arcade multiplayer charm, with potential not just for local game nights but even online play. The gunplay is decent enough to counter the movement issues, and there are enough modes to keep things interesting. A good first console outing for Black Hive, and I hope to see the game thrive going forward.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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